WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The world's most popular emoji is the "face with tears of joy", a recent study has revealed.

The study, believed to be the first large-scale analysis of emoji usage, was conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, analyzing about 400 million messages sent by nearly four million people in over 200 countries.

It was discovered that out of the 1281 available emojis, only 119 "constitute around 90 percent of usage". The smily face with tears streaming from its eyes, known as "face with tears of joy", accounted for 15.4 percent of the total emoji usage. The use of the emoji has been so popular that "face with tears of joy" was named "word" of the year by Oxford Dictionaries in 2015.

Meanwhile, both the heart and heart-eyes face had a 6 percent share of the total.

"Emojis are everywhere. They are becoming the ubiquitous language that bridges everyone across different cultures," Wei Ai, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Information told the Daily Mail.

However, a few countries do not favor the "face with tears of joy". French people, known for their romantic temperament, prefer to use the "heart" emoji, and nearly all of their top 10 emojis are heart-related, the study showed.